Sidewinder Hack Nightmare?

[mr.gummybear]

I have to start off and say that I have no real woodworking/electronicsexperience. So I guess you can say I have no idea what I am doing.

However, after three days of wood chopping and soldering I managed to build what I thought was my first very own Desktop Arcade Microsoft Sidewinder Hack Control Joystick...

I plugged my contraption into my SoundBlaster Live! Gameport and the Gaming Controllers successfully detected my joystick as a Sidewinder gamepad. "Home free," I thought.

I continued to setup my keys and fired up the zsnes for some Super Street Fighter II action. No more than 30 seconds later the joystick "died." I didn't get throw a hadoken, it just quit on me.

I checked the Gaming Controllers and now instead of "Status OK" it was replaced with a "Status Not Connected."

I plugged in a gamepad, reinstalled the soundcard, tried all kinds of reboots and restarts, but I could not get the soundcard's gameport to recognize anything I plugged in.

Thinking nothing of it, I gave up on that particular machine (WindowsXP) I moved on to another box (Windows98SE) with another Sound Blaster Live! and again got the joystick to detect. This time I spent some time in the Controls Setup screen for the emulator and all of a sudden the joystick stopped responding.. I was only half way done setting each button up.

"Status Not Connected"

I plugged in a gamepad, reinstalled the soundcard, tried all kinds of reboots and restarts, but I could not get the soundcard's gameport to recognize anything I plugged in.

So I installed ANOTHER spare Sound Blaster Live! and AGAIN got the joystick to detect. This time I fired up a space shooting game... fired off about 10 lasers and picked up a powerup before my ship stopped responding.

"Status Not Connected"

I plugged in a gamepad, reinstalled the soundcard, tried all kinds of reboots and restarts, but I could not get the soundcard's gameport to recognize anything I plugged in.

And now I'm sitting here wondering what I did wrong... because I had no troubles playing w/ a regular Sidewinder gamepad BEFORE testing my joystick.

If anyone can offer any help at all it would be greatly appreciated.

(BTW I think I did not connect two grounds on the sidewinder circuit board..... and had a sick feeling that THAT might have sent eletric death shocks to my SoundBlaster gameport.)



mr.gummybear

[JustMichael]

It would be my guess that you are now the proud owner of 3 soundcards with dead gameports.  As for what you did wrong, I have no idea because I can't see the Sidewinder or what and where you solder to.  It sounds like you  connected something directly to ground which results in too much current being drawn.  This in turn burns out the gameport portion of the card.  You won't be able to fix the soundcards if this is the case.  You can only replace them.  I would suggest you NOT try plugging that Sidewinder hack into another gameport.

[CthulhuLuke]

Hopefully you didn't burn out your ports, but here's what I suggest if your ports still work even after your sidewinders died in em (like you can plug in another joystick that works, and it's detected and all that), then your problem by my guess is one of the grounds is disconnecting.  I've had the ground disconnect a million times on me with my control panel, and it's a PAIN, cause you gotta go through and try to figure out which one is not responding, with the I-Pac, it's easy, but with my PSX controllers all the buttons would start pressing themselves at the same time, and just weird random crap.
  -So my suggestion if the gameports aren't burned out, that your grounds need rechecking, just go through and maybe resolder any weak points you think might be screwing up the joystick.
  -One thing if the grounds were loose and it were making every button be pressed, it would also be pressing the MODE button, which would incidently make the gameport "Not Connected" in the control panel.  Try it with a working sidewinder if you don't believe me.
      -CthulhuLuke

[toben00]

I have a feeling the gameports are dead. After reinstalling the sound card it fails to detect:

A regular sidewinder gamepad, "the joystick," and a cheapo 99 cent 4 button + turbo gamepad. :[

(I was actually only able to reinstall one of the sound cards, the other one I tried wouldn't detect as a Sound Blaster Live! [but probably due to me losing the driver cd])

Michael: "It sounds like you  connected something directly to ground which results in too much current being drawn." Is there anything particular I should be looking for? The ground is actually pretty close to the other contacts and my soldering job is a bit messy... would connecting the ground to a button cause something like that?

Luke: Strangely enough the LEDs on both the joystick and gamepad will light up in the gameport. I'm even able to hit Mode and turn it on and off (not the joystick, I didn't connect a pushbutton to the Mode contacts).

Does the I-Pac need soldering? I'm thinking I need an easier solution to this.

[JustMichael]

The I-PAC does not require soldering.  You will need a very small flat-head screwdriver though.
As for your soldering job, that depends upon how the sidewinder is designed.  I don't know as I have never owned one much less hacked one.  If it is like most joysticks, each button connects two points on the circuit board.  The safest way would be to connect (solder) an arcade button to each of the points (kind of like ----(  )---- where the button connects the () together).  You might have to follow the wire back a little to find a good solder point (if any).  

[CthulhuLuke]

yeah, I-Pac's are WAYYYY easy.  You can even reprogram all the buttons, but their only drawback is the price.  I mean it's totally reasonable for what it is, but 50 bucks for an encoder is a little much.  btw, JustMichael, the gameport sidewinders had those holes in the PCB that you could solder to that supposedly made them WAYYY easy to solder to,  because you didn't have to worry about making direct connection to the contacts.
 -my suggestion if you don't mind hacking another gamepad, and having it work on Playstation and PC, is to do this:  go to your local Gamestop or any video game shop, search for either A: those digital Gamestop brand playstation controllers, B: those digital Pelican brand playstation controllers, or C: if you can't find those, grab a mad catz digital playstation controller.  I found mine for 5 dollars!  They're so useless if you're not hacking them, they're freakin 5 bucks!
  Now crack it open, and you only have to solder to one of the grounds, and solder all the other contact points, DOn't solder the turbo cause the extension of the contact will sometimes make it randomly make like 5 of your buttons become turbo after it hasn't been touched in a while.  Buy those female quick disconnects for the arcade buttons, cause they're like 100 times easier to work with than just soldering directly onto the microswitches.
  Once you have that all soldered on, get on Ebay, and look up "Playstation to pc USB"  and you should get a very very long list of adapters for your computer.  I DO NOT suggest the kind that show a picture of a usb port and 2 playstation ports ONLY, advertised as Playstation to PC usb 2 dual shock  or something like that, because it doesn't show the actual USB box, which makes me way iffy.  Try to get something more like this, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1366501014   the one's that only support one psx pad are fine as well, that's what I use when I use my arcade joystick.  I bought mine for 15 dollars w/shipping, and it worked 100% for me, very very few DOS emulators would have some problems, but I would just change the order of joysticks (cause I have a few hooked up) in the control panel.
   With this method you save over 30 bucks, and can use your joystick on Playstation as well, BUT the I-pac is a VERY solid product, I love mine, it's just made more for 2 player type of action, since it has Joystick 1 and 2 support, I love mine.  Plus if you somehow messed up the wiring, it's no problem, because it's REALLY hard to burn out your USB port with a PSX pad that has no dual shock to power.
    -good luck
       -CthulhuLuke

[hyiu]

I have hacked a few sidewinders already and so far, they're all ok.....

when you take apart the sidewinder, the left trigger and the right trigger actually have wires soldered to 2 small pieces of circuit board. (so, total, 4 wires) 2 of them are ground and 1 is left trigger and 1 is right trigger...
you can use just 1 of the ground for the whole sidewinder hack... it is ok.... (and with reuse the wires... you have 3 less soldering points to do... less chance for error...)
so, you only solder the following holes...
up, down, left, right, a, b, c, x, y, z, start.
only 11 points to solder.

also, are you using those holes for soldering ?? or are you soldering on the button positions ?? Can you take a couple of close view pics and post it somewhere ?? then maybe we can take a look.... (without trying with it, chances of figuring out what's wrong is slim.... but maybe we could have some clue....)

anyway... next time... by the time it makes the 2nd sound card not working properly... you should not try the 3rd time...

also... when I hack the sidewinder, I do NOT hack the mode button.... it is because somehow, once you hit the mode button, it goes into another mode and its just not right... (you know... there is a light on the sidewinder pad... if you hit the mode button, the light will go on and off.... make sure the light is on....

I think if I look into the driver software, you can program the sidewinder to do extra stuffs with this mode button, but for me... I only use it for Mame... so... no use...)

-----------------------------------

now.... do you have another joypad ??... I would first look into your sound card... see if they have any permanent damage.... plug in another working joypad and see if the
card works correctly (with both sound and joystick port)
if they work, then it means your sidewinder didn't burn them..... then its good....

next is retrace all your wires and buttons... make sure the mode button is not pressed... it could be your conncetion, or it could also be the microswitch... (I know... microswitch pblm is not big chance... but it happened to me before...)

but if you really manage to burn your sound cards... I would NOT suggest you plug it into another one unless you found out what's wrong.... anyway... sidewinders are quite cheap nowadays.... like $5 each....

hope it helps...

[toben00]

Well not only did I try soldering those holes I also tried using the Alternate BL and BR holes as well as the PR and MO (accidentally, I thought this was the big M button).

Well, it seems that my solder stuff ripped off the copper contact.... like maybe it ripped that ring right out of the hole. Which I thought made it now unusable.

I happened to destroy the A and Z holes like this. (So I then had the idea of scraping away the A and Z button contact and soldering directly to those points.

Yea As for why I didn't stop at the second sound card was because my first attempt was on Windows XP with a Sound Blaster Live! Value card... after it broke that, and I wasn't able to determine why I just blamed Windows XP and tried a second time on another Windows 98SE with a Sound blaster Live! Value card... when this one died, I then blamed the VALUE card... and tried it again with a Windows 98SE + Sound Blaster Live! (normal).

THIS TIME, I tried my unhacked gamepad and played through a few levels before going back and plugging in my joystick. And again after no more than 20-30 seconds of playing it killed my third sound card.


But yea... I don't think it's because of the Mode button, because the LED is still lighting up.

As for the 5$ sidewinders... are there any B&M or online ordering companies that still carry them?

I'd like to have 4 sidewinders for just general gaming but for my next arcade hack I am definitely sticking to that IPAC thing.. it sounds like even I would have a hard time at messing that up. :]

[toben00]

Now I guess the only reason I'm afraid of the Sidewinders are because the holes are so goshdarn small and close together.

As for those other PSX gamepads you mentioned, luke, how large are the hole/contacts in comparison to the sidewinder?



Oh and thanks for the suggestion of quick contacts, I will see if I can find any at radio shack.

[CthulhuLuke]

No prob, I don't know if you can get those quick contacts at radio shack, but a lot of hardware stores carry em, like Shucks.
  Ok, if you buy one of the cheap off brand psx controllers, which you should, there should be the contact points right, then there will also be these extra round spaces that are meant as test points.  I wish I had a digital camera and I'd just go take a picture of what I'm talking about on my interface board in my cabinet, but basically the cheaper the psx pad you buy, the more likely the contact points and test points are going to be huge and easy to wire to.  The only hard buttons that I had to wire to were the L and R 1 and 2s, because it was hard to tell the ground from the positive sides, but it worked out in the end perfectly.  If you want to try to find the cheapest sidewinders, try going to www.pricewatch.com  and looking at their computer accessories section, they have a list of prices with shipping.  To get the best deals though it's best to get your sidewinders on Ebay.
  Here's the exact controller I'm talking about that's perfect to hack, although this page has it priced too high, try going to your local game shop, and you can probably find it for less than 5 dollars,   http://www.playstation-games-accessories.com/cgi-bin/playstation/PL-3003.html?id=Jq6ETP9Z
   and hey hey, I was just searching around and actually found the exact model I was talking about all disected, http://www.angelfire.com/mn2/arcadecontrols/ddr/wiring.html   check out the test points I was talking about, although past that all the rest is bizarre, because he bought the quick disconnects with male and females, but you just want female quick disconnects,  that size is good, but I went a size smaller, because they're easy to keep on the pushbuttons (smaller ones are blue)
    -good luck
   -CthulhuLuke